RADA. A 'reminiscent chat' with Rosina Filippi at the Academy of Dramatic Art (1911)

In this episode Robert reads extracts from Rosina Filippi's book Hints to Speakers and Players and discusses her relationship with the important teacher and actor Herman Vezin in order to gain some insight into teaching within the institutions of Edwardian actor training. 

Transcript

Unknown Speaker  0:01  
This is a recording of

Unknown Speaker  0:05  
Tree reading Hamlets Soliloquoy on death.

Unknown Speaker  0:51  
Hello and welcome to the history of actor training in the British drama school. This edition is going to be concerned with the Victorian and Edwardian drama school. Specifically the first few years of operation of the Academy of Dramatic Art, founded in 1904. Originally called Mr. Trees school after the founder, Herbert Beerbohm tree who you were just listening to. So that's why we started with a bit of that. That was the recording of a man who was born in 1852. So when you're listening to Herbert Beerbohm tree, doing his acting there, you're listening to enacting which I guess, was firming up and developing in the 18 in the 1870s, at his peak in the 1880s and 1890s. And into the early days, the early part of the 20th century. So that's a very old, I suppose a very old form of acting.

Unknown Speaker  1:56  
But we're not going

Unknown Speaker  1:57  
to talk much about Herbert Beerbohm tree who's at least a bit well known and still lingers in the knowledge of rudder actors, because their showcase at the end of their third year, or towards the end of their third year, is still known as the tree after habit. Tree. So we're not going to talk about Mr. Tree, we're going to talk about somebody who I suspect has been more or less, completely forgotten. And that's the the actor and teacher, Rosina philipe. And the reason why I'd like to talk about Rosina Philippi. Well, the main reason is because I think she's amazing. I really, really like her. I like her books. I like reading her. And you get a very strong sense when you spend time with Rosina of the kind of person she was, or certainly of the kind of teacher she was perhaps as more more accurate. I first came across Regina philipe reading Memoirs of actors who are trained at out a router Mr. Tree school. In the early years of the 20th century, I was trying to find out what people did. And that's quite tricky to find out. Partly because routers records were destroyed in fire and bombing, I think a fire caused by the bombing of the academy during the Second World War. It's not unusual the drama school records disappear. I was talking to a colleague at East 15 this week who said she just quite quite recently popped up into the loft to find out what there was left of the records of East 15 and and discovered that they've been eaten by squirrels. So a combination of the Luftwaffe and squirrels are kind of taking out quite a lot of the history of the drama school the documented history. But in in memoirs and records and stories about ardour, Rosina Philippi, often pops up as the most popular teacher. This is a fairly typical example, from the memoirs or a biography actually, of Maggie Albanese. Maggie Albanese was an extraordinary actor by all accounts, who who died very young probably have a botched abortion when she was in her early 20s. But the book talks about her time at ADA and says this. Rosina Fillipi who had worked with Benson and tree was the best woman teacher of the day, and had around her own studio for some years before Ardo recruited her motherly, untidy and blunt, surrounded by clouds of dogs and cigarette smoke and waving a fencing foil to emphasise a point. She was a close friend of shore, who came to watch her work and his plays. Despite the apparently random style of her class, she might carry on a conversation at the same time, her main emphasis was on the combination of clear and musical speech, full vowels and sharp consonants with flexibility of movement, a shavian performer needs while philipe might leap onstage and perform by way of it This was a way of galvanising, the student rather than eliciting carbon copies. A strength lay in the way she could communicate her own passion for the work to students, just as she tried to communicate a passion for Shakespeare to the patrons of a struggling Old Vic. So that's fairly fairly typical. I tried to find out more about her and found out bits and pieces from newspapers. But then I found that she'd written a book rather a marvellous book called hints, to speakers and players, which was published in 1911. And when I read it, I found it fascinating and charming and surprising, because what comes through in that book is no sort of comically foolish, old, old ham, but but an insightful and brilliant teacher, whose ideas and this is the really curious part would not be out of place in a modern acting class. So I'm going to read you a couple of things, a newspaper reports. And then I'm going to read you some extracts from her book, hints to speakers and players, just to sort of put some of this into context. So tree was born in 1852. Philip, he was born in 1866. Interestingly, the reason why she came to England was because

Unknown Speaker  6:25  
of the events of the Paris Commune in 1871, when Rosina Philippi was five years old and living in Paris. The Paris Commune was a terrible event, in the numbers of deaths involved in in the the Revolution and the repression of that, I think contested by historians, but in the region of 20,000 people died. So as serious moments of political violence revolution and counter revolution, Rosina Philippi, fled to England with her grandmother when she was 15 years old in 1881, she had lessons with Herman or Henry vezon who were going to meet a little bit through resin Philip his writings. It's one of the most fascinating parts of the book to me because in resin filippis memories of of him invest in you get a very clear example of what actual training was like, in 1881. And the form of training that Rosina philipe was was taking in 1881. With with Herman vezon was I suspect, fairly sort of typical at the time. Not everyone liked him invest in LC Fogarty apparently said this, this comes from a book about the Central School. So at the LC Fogarty Memorial Lecture in in 1978, one of LC faculties colleagues still living at the time, described how she had drama lessons from the American Henry vezon. She recounted her teacher, revising, her teacher would stand on the hearth rug and say, hence home you idle Romans get you home, and she at the other end of the room would say, hence home, you idle Romans get you home. And when you could no longer tell the difference between Henry as in at 60 and Elsie Fogarty at 18, you were doing very nicely. This, again, is a fairly typical critical sort of description of the kind of teaching that went on in Victorian apartments and and homes referred tends to refer to as hearth rug tuition. But Rosina philipe, as you'll find out, has a very different description of it. She She seems to love Henri vez in Hammond resin, and always talks about him in her books and in her interviews, and I detect you may detect to a particular tenderness towards him. When I investigated him, I found something that's moving and I think perhaps, pertinent to this when he when he died in 1910. And his obituary is in the stage in the era and other newspapers at the time, he asked for no outward token of mourning, that he had no burial, and asked for no flowers here, his ashes were scattered on Golders Green I might make a trip someday and think about Henry vezon which seems strange because he was a hugely successful and important actor and teacher, a proper one. And then I found out that that his wife, had committed suicide in 1902 by throwing herself from from the house where she was being protected by nurses that her attendants had left the room and she threw herself from from an upstairs window. And that was in response to the the death The premature death of her daughter, adults daughter in 1901. So So between 1900 and 1910, Henry vezon had clearly had a very, very difficult and sad time of it. I wonder if in Rosina philippus descriptions of him in 1905 and 1911. She? Well, I think she clearly is aware of what was going on if they remain close. Well, that's just a little sort of side story, the rather sad end of the great Victorian actor, Henry resin. So, anyway, the first thing I'm going to read to you about the Forgotten teacher, Rosina philipe, comes from a newspaper article published in 1905. In the illustrated sporting and drama news. She's obviously an extraordinary woman. The article begins by saying, Miss Rosina philipe is about the only actress who, through many years of successful appearance before the public has set her face Absolutely, and unconditionally against the journalist who was designated interviewer. It was only after much persuasion that she eventually received for the purpose of having a little chat,

Unknown Speaker  11:03  
the representative of the illustrated sporting and dramatic news. So the reporter goes to see her in the in the vaudeville theatre, with the lights comedy music of the catch of the season. And in the article, there are lots of lovely pictures of Rosie in the Philippines doing her doing her thing I might stick one of those onto there. The the image that comes with the podcast, it's quite a quite a sizable interview about halfway through the interviewer asks Rosina Philippi. I suppose you have a daydream, most of us have. Is yours, a theatre? Where you may do just as you like, and Rosina philipe answers, yes, bands. No. My dream is to have a theatre and to do justice I like in it, but not quite in the way you mean. My theatre should be called the little green theatre, and in it, I shall produce what I call my green stuff. I have a very great affection for the young. And I think they have, especially in this profession, and unduly rough time of it. They rarely get their chances until most of the ambition and the enthusiasm has been knocked out of them. And they have lost all that strong hopeful buoyancy, which gets over the Footlights so well, when their chance comes, they bring experience to carry them through. But I do not think that it is a good substitute for the strong, wayward ambition and hopefulness they bartered. I think the charm and strength of youth is passed to lightly by in this profession, we have older growth, the two ready to stump the little green plant, we are not careful to preserve what perhaps first attracted us to it, youth, and even sometimes irritating confidence of it is, in my opinion, a far more value to the stage and a play than experience, which is often bought by sore sore disappointment and the futile beating of wings against iron bars. That's good, isn't it? I like that. I like that bid, which is often bought by sore sore disappointment and the futile beating of wings against iron bars. There is in a Filipino, so way around the theatre and the acting, Academy or warrant. She's asked about that in a moment. So the interviewer says, you're fond of teaching, are you not? Did you not teach for some time? It's trees, school, tree school being what will eventually become? Radha is in a Philippi replies, yes, for some time, but I like doing things in my own way. You know, I'm intensely interested in teaching as her and she changes the subject rather diplomatically. She that was just after the opening of Arda, Rosina Philip, he was there on the on the opening night, which I think is Monday the 25th of April 1904. She's described in in newspaper articles as being on stage with tree who she liked and admired as an actor. When it's opened, I think she's left there a year later, but then she must return because she's teaching at ardour during other stages in the early 20th century. I think there you get a sense of the kind of character she is. So perhaps without further ado, we should head into the the book itself. So as we as we do this, just imagine you're a young, a young student, one of the students at the Academy of Dramatic Arts or perhaps popping around to rosiness flat in the late 19th, early 20th century. And enjoy. So the book is called hints to speakers and players and it's written as a series of letters. So I'll just I'll just read you the beginning of book one and then we'll move in some other other bit we'll move around a bit. x one letter one is called diction and elocution. She uses Shakespeare speech the players as a kind of a framing device for the for the chapters. So she starts off by by saying, speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounce it to you trippingly

Unknown Speaker  14:57  
on the tongue

Unknown Speaker  15:00  
Idea sons and daughters 52 of you my little pack as I call you don't know if she's at ardour I suspect she is. Let's decide she is. So this is this is 52 students at the Academy of Dramatic Art in 1910 or 11. My little pack as I call you, and which are divided into aces, kings, queens and Alas, knaves. And lastly, little numerical pips or embryo kings and queens, like the larvae in a hive. I have been asked to write a book on elocution. But you all know what a horror I have of the word which most of you pronounces elocution. Poor elocution. What a dull, uninteresting female she is, when she goes on soccer match doesn't really like elocution. And she says, I wonder what benefits can be derived from such terrible stuff. So when I was first asked to compile a volume on elocution some years ago, I lifted up my hands like a dear old injured bar lamb and refused point blank to have anything to do with it. Personal steel Rosina Philippi. But now I'm allowed to write to you personally and make this more or less of a reminiscent chat. So what we're about to receive are extracts from a reminiscence chat with Rosina philipe. What follows are a number of chapters where she takes you through voice and speech exercises, the sort of the classic stuff that you would imagine being part of the early Edwardian Academy, most of its pretty good, actually makes sense. One might dispute a few things. There's a section when she when she speaks about a particular exercise, which I tried last week, or yesterday, actually, with some students from East 15 in Epping Forest, this is the middle of the second COVID, a lot of the beginning of the second lockdown of COVID. So I wouldn't have done this exercise in class, but we were out in the in the open with lots of distance between us. So we we did an interesting experiment in in pedagogical archaeology, and I tried this out quite like it. So after many, many lessons, we get to this one. Talking about actors, let him now do this exercise, he must write in the air as slowly as possible and imaginary alphabet in capital letters as big as himself, beginning the base of the letter that the full stretch of his arm and saying the letter he is writing in one breath.

Unknown Speaker  17:37  
As the movement of the letter rises above his head, he must increase the volume of sound, and then she goes through a baby suit, whatever, you can imagine the exercise this exercise is most difficult to describe on paper, but try it all the same, never lose sight of the hand with which you write your letter, your head will in this way, get a movement also and your bearing will grow easy. It is a mistake to do head exercises by themselves as to do them well. You must stiffen the muscles of your neck and my object is to get all the stiffness out of the body not to put it that not put it there. And then she goes on to say this writing exercise is chiefly for the head and neck and you will do more in one day by it than you will in a month of the other stiff head exercises taught in physical culture schools. Well that's like you know saying to an actor do things to release rather than rather than going to the going to the gym. Mind the physical culture methods are excellent if you have time to forget you have ever learned them. But the irony there from Rosina, I think, but you young actors are too impatient to begin to act to give the necessary time to working your art properly. In all its more lengthy methods. There is also a most beautiful exercise on long fellows carry moss. And then she talks about a couple of poems and G very tantalisingly tells us that they're extraordinary exercises, but she won't tell us what they are. She says they are the essence of grace. I've known the most awkward person develop into quite a graceful mover by the working of these two poems alone. And the alphabet. These are the only methods I use to teach gesture. And I found them out by myself when I was in numerical pyp. So now we're about to meet the eventually tragic figure of Mr. Herman or Henry vezon. This is just after his death, she's writing this. I just think it's moving. Mr. VAZ in his teaching consisted in his city in an armchair his pupil in another. He first read a scene and his pupil read it afterwards, not unlike the description from Elsie Fogarty, but with a different sort of response. I went three times a week to him three times a week to a fencing school three times a week to a dancing mistress, and three times a week to the swimming bars in the south. For three years, and one day, I suddenly went to Mr. Frank Benson, and played lead with him. And I can't tell you how or why I was ready to act. But I was. I sat in my chair opposite Mr. Herman visitin for three years. And then he said, I was ready to act, and I acted. But I should not dare to use the same system with any of you. In the first place, you would not have the faith in me, I had in Mr. vezon. And you would be perfectly justified. He compelled confidence. But you want to act now, at once, before you can speak, or walk, or breathe or move. You won't work out you're three years underground. You remember from the the earlier newspaper article, she's endlessly using horticultural metaphors when she talks about learning. You all want to be full blown perennials before you were even seeds. Art is long, it is very long, but it is eternal water. And three or four years given to the study of it is not a very great deal. You make the teachers work most awfully difficult. You hurry us how often you come to us and ask us, how long will it be before we're ready for an engagement? You mean, how soon not how long? We patch you up, put a coat of varnish on you. And you look to be quite clever when you perform under our immediate care. But when you are on your own, how few of you can keep your head above water. You don't know enough? Well, that could be a description of, of where we're in danger of heading again. In the British drama school, I would say I wonder what Rosina Philippi would make would make of it all. She goes on to talk about him revising again, can't describe to you what the sensation was of climbing up those narrow little steps of Mr. vez in flat three times a week in rainy weather, and sunshiny weather alike. And having that hour with him. Full of the most interesting work, analysing, arguing, disputing, looking up different authorities to substantiate both our opinions. I didn't want to act

Unknown Speaker  22:14  
i was living. You think that learning the words of apart constitutes the study of the character. It is only a mechanical boredom. Words are the bane of an actor's life. Words stop action. And his own imagination will often supply better words than his author. I am not speaking of It's incredible, isn't it? I think that's extraordinary that bit because it's more or less the kind of stuff that Sanford Meisner would say radically in the 1950s and 60s. But there it's coming from Rosina philipe, the most popular teacher of the Academy of Dramatic Arts back in the early part of the 20th century. She goes on to say more about characterization. I'll read you some more. She says, because the writing is so bad, modern writing she's talking about she says the characterization depends entirely on the actor's art. Not only his conception of the part in question, but his knowledge of human nature, his observation of everyday life, his technical knowledge of history, geography, the classics, is inborn love of the sister arts? How can you hope to learn all that in six months? And without this knowledge? How can you ever hope to play Queen Catherine? If you do not know not only her personal history, but the history of the time she lived in? How can you hope to play Woolsey? This is Henry the Eighth isn't a very popular play at this time. Henry the Eighth barely performs now. How can you hope to play Woolsey, if you know nothing of the people power of Wells's day, or bassiana if you know nothing of Venice and of the different lives lived at that epoch, the eastern and western mind conflicting and commercial interest. All this is part of an actor's education, or should be. And as this rule applies to the impersonation of characters in the classical drama, so much more Is it necessary in modern work? This is fantastic stuff. This could be Christopher fat is I think, the drama Centre in 1964. revolutionising British acting, the antecedents of a modern character must be mentally understood. No human being ever comes into one's life as a bolt from the blue. They're always the chains of ancestry behind him. And to get into the bones of the character you play, you must throwback to at least two generations. But all this is a terrible digression from what I started out to say on this subject of gesture. So let us return to our Martin's. And she goes back to talking about gesture. Anyway, brilliant, Rosina Philippi. There's a bit later on when she talks about him, as letter six is on emphasis, emotion, colour and tone and she describes it his suggestion to an actor she's working with working on Juliet speech, and it's rather fascinating. So I'm going to read you a bit of that, too. So this is letter seven, it starts off by saying she starts off by saying, Be not to tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor is that part of, of Hamlet speech she's looking at? My dear Kathleen, my eldest daughter, my very dear, these aren't her daughters, these students, my very dear daughter, do in heaven's name, open your mouth, and lets me hear you speak your lines as you feel them. Think them. Your mind is the most cultivated of any of my beloved students, you think like a cultured, mature woman of double your age. I've often marvelled at the sobriety of your mind. And it's all the knowledge you possess, the very first reading of a part, you get the very soul out of it. And then you fix your teeth together, and in a dull monotone. You sing song, your words, and the whole structure goes to pieces, and you seem to be terrified at emphasis. Then she goes on to tell her off a bit more. That's interesting, but this is is is even better.

Unknown Speaker  26:11  
So she says to her, you should learn the potion scene in Romeo and Juliet, in a dimly lighted room, before a long glass, say it when all the rest of the family has gone to bed and say it so that none of them will be disturbed in their sleep. Juliet is alone in her room, but the rest of the household is up. And if she made as much noise as most actresses do when they said everybody from her father to the cook, who is preparing the marriage feast would rush in to know what was the matter. I imagined Juliet's room curtain off from the one in which the nurse and Lady Capulet and some sewing maids are busy with her wedding dress, and her terrors in three sections, a mental, not physical noise in fear is the expression of a physical instinct for help and not of mental agony. Juliet reiterates the fears she mentioned to the fryer and a former scene. When with him in the broad daylight she's scorns the idea of fear over mastering her courage. So in the earliest scene, she says, oh, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, from off the battlements of yonder tower, or walk in feverish ways, or beat me Look where serpents are chained me with right so she is saying, I'm not scared. I do those things without fear or doubt, to live an unstained wife to my sweet love. But batteries in the Philippines. When she is alone, the fears she connected to the fryer come more vividly to her imagination. she realises she may be called upon to face the charnel house all alone, she may see the dead stabled festering in his shroud. Each picture as it leaps up to her brings a fresh horror. But in her subconscious state, she knows she must not call out loud, otherwise her only chance of escape from her marriage with Paris will be as an end. This scene should be whispered from beginning to end, and it is the intensity of her feelings that will fill the whole theatre with a terrorist she is feeling. Yes, it is difficult. But once you've satisfied yourself, you've got it. The rest comes easily enough for it's only a mechanism of voice production. When you have got the feeling. Turn up the lights in your room, cover your looking glass and begin again. Don't mind the sleeping family anymore. It is you Kathleen that have now to work up that scene to a crescendo, not Juliet. Your work should now be introspective. Remember the effect you made on yourself as you worked it out in the semi darkness and now chisel it devoid of personal emotion. No actress has any business to feel the emotion she is portraying. When it is ready for public inspection, you must have felt it emotion to you is a thing of the past. It has now to have a concrete form. You have to hand it bodily over the Footlights. So this is really amazing because this is a fairly detailed description of what Stanislavski will call I believe the the true art of the representative actor. So this is different from Stan's laughs gears aim to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances. And it's just extraordinary that it's so well described there by him, Rosina Philippi. So I suppose we would tend to disagree with that theory of acting, but it's it's marvellously realised. She says a little bit later, the actress from whose eyes tears for nightly is never impressive. But the actress from whose eyes No tears have ever fallen, is not worthy of a part in a musical sketch. You can't be a truly great comedian without the note of tragedy and vice versa. tears and laughter are the twin daughters of every true artist. So we may disagree with Rosina Philippine, but it's not. It's not rubbish. That's a tan is concerned with gagging, selfishness and fooling as she addresses it to miss a see. idea, a you Columbine of clowns? Do you read this? For there be of them some that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of Baron spectators to laugh to. She's a bit crass with them, Miss AC. She says, If you only can find your clowning to amusing an audience, one might forgive you, but you clowns and make your fellow actors laugh. And that's unpardonable. She goes on in this chapter to describe some people she's worked with. And she said some really interesting things about comedy and how to work with a laugh. So for those of you that are interested in the history of comedy acting and training for comedy and theories of comedy, I think you might enjoy this bit. And

Unknown Speaker  31:00  
she's going to talk about some terrible actors you've worked with, which is always, always nice to listen to. A little while ago, I produced an opera. All the company were amateurs, so called by keenness and a good deal of stage knowledge. They had none of the amateur tricks. They were very earnest set of dilettantes, all but one, who, to my horror, at the last rehearsal, thinking probably to do much more with his part than I had a lot of to him, pretended to dribble beer he was drinking onto his shirt front, there was a good deal of buy play in the performance of this elegant business. And at that moment, a very serious piece of work was being done by someone else. His provenance position on the stage, for he was quite close to the Footlights, distracted the attention from the man who should have had all the attention of the audience. delinquencies of this sword as simply the result of want of training. And unless an actor is trained, he will go on with these ugly tricks till they develop into something much worse, selfishness. No thoroughly trained actor is ever selfish. I have only met three selfish creatures in all my career. And in every case, they were untrained actors. Their position on the stage gives me the light direct for their all three and very much higher positions than I am on the stage. But they were never trained. They have told me so themselves with evidence, pride, feel people don't change do that you can have those conversations on a film set or a theatre to this day. One of these persistently kept upstage, during the entire scene I had with him. I had to fix my eye on his and but all the expression I had to portray in the middle of my back, obviously very good acting, listen to this. That was all the audience could see of me. I had to express cunning, determination, deception, terror, pleading, cajoling, cupidity all in my shoulder blades, I can assure you, I remember that man has one of the most selfish I have ever met. Another never would wait tonight finish speaking but nips down on my last word, but one that was a smudgy thing to do. That was a smart thing to do is in Philippi. Had she been trained, she would not have done it for all the world. But she is a generous woman. It's only in her work. She is selfish. She doesn't know any better. She doesn't do it to me. It goes on to talk about this person. And then she describes him on this is really interesting bit I think she says the third. Oh, that one is too awful to think of his offence is far worse. He breaks every laugh that belongs to another by some violence gesture. As surely as anyone gets a laugh, he either claps his hands or slaps his thigh or sits down violently, or kicks a table or upsets a chair. It's absolute agony to act a comedy scene with him. He's too stupid to it spitefully. He's merely an untrained amateur with a pitiful ambition, and is selfish enough to want to keep all the bond bonds for himself. And there is no bond bond so toothsome as a hearty laugh from the audience. I've had this experience I in the gates theatre, in A Christmas Carol directed by Alan Stanford, I work for somebody who did exactly this. Break someone's laugh, and he is your enemy for life. I know I'm savage when it happens to me. And she goes on to talk about the problems to do this act of justice. I don't believe he does it on purpose. I don't for a moment think he's malicious there. It looks uncommonly like it. I think it's simply one of training. A laugh upsets him. He doesn't know how to play with it. He doesn't understand that a comedy is a piece played by the cost of the play, and an extra person. And that extra person is the audience. A laugh in the audience is the cue, not the word given on stage. Others on the other hand, play with a laugh too long and let it die out. And it's a Herculean labour to pick up the comedy again. This is good stuff. For me a familiar conversation to have with that. To deal successfully with a laugh is a very difficult thing. It requires a great deal of experience. There are some plays, where the laugh comes from the pit and travels to the stalls, others where the laugh begins at the stalls and travels to the pit. These are two distinct species of laughter and require different treatments. This is fantastic things no listen to this in the first, the first is the one whether whether laugh comes from the pit and travels to the stores. In the first you can wait a long time. It's death begins at about five rows of stalls from you. In the latter. You mustn't wait to get anywhere near the pit, you must hurry on with the play. There is an unmistakable wave of sound, which warns you when the laugh is nearing its end.

Unknown Speaker  35:53  
I must say comedy to me is far more interesting to play than the serious drama. It is more wholesome to laugh than to cry, but it is far more difficult to command laughter than tears. And one runs the risk of meeting a selfish amateur in almost every comedy one plays in any way. She goes on to talk actually about playing with them. Herbert Beerbohm tree but maybe I read that another time she does say all the delicious moments are playing with Herbert's tree, his subtle methods has given take it's given take his generosity, his patience and his good humour in comedy. So she clearly likes Herbert Beerbohm tree unless you just be nice to pass. Anyway, we're nearly at the end of these extracts. I'd like to read you more but probably nobody wants to listen to five hours of Rosina philippian. Maybe Maybe they would maybe I'll do an entire audio book of brilliant letters. That's a 12 is good buy. If you've had the patience to read the foregoing letters, and are still kind enough to read this one. Let me hasten to assure you that I can easier teach 20 what we're good to do than be one of the 20 to follow my own teaching. Well, that's very humble of you, Rosina philippian. And very true. Of course. I know nothing of the art and supposed to teach. And please exonerate me from the accusation that I ever do teach. It is you who have taught me I have an inborn love of the young as you know, and your youth has kept me young too, so that when you emerge from your chrysalids to become beautiful butterflies, instead of a spectacled, old entomologist as I ought to be by now, I still remain a fussy etymologist she's ironic she puns, she's brilliant. I still babble foolishly, over the study of words and syllables. The line I like best in all, Hamlet, is his answer to Polonius, when asked by him, what it was he read, words, words, words, I should like to know the dictionary by heart. The mere sound of those long columns of words, has a most soothing effect on me. I opened the book at random. So this is Rosina philippian 1910, shortly after the death of her teacher, Herman beziehen, opening the dictionary in her apartments, so Ma'am, I opened the book at random. Here is a line of words that positively rings with sound. It is metallic, like Salvation Army brass band, kale, Kaleidoscope calendar, though I never saw it spelled like that before. Carly Kelly, Calif. kangaroo core cackle. kedge keel key ledge keel Hall. Keeling. kilson keen. Keep keepsake Kendall, Kendall edge, catch kettle and all the funny inadequate descriptions given of each by a compiler so shy of being accused of showing any imagination that your own has to go on a long journey with each word. For instance, cackle he describes as a term in navigation. Does the captain order the meats to cackle the starboard or does it swing between decks or drag on a rope behind the ship? Or is it a brass button on a reefer code? What is a cackle? Whatever it is, it's a difficult words to say and sounds more like an encouragement to a lagging horse. When again, it seems to me very frivolous to inscribe the word core in a dictionary at all, as it essentially belongs to bird language. The picture is and those of you that are fond of Kristin Linklaters work my like this bit idea. The picture of the word evokes is a little church near Oxford, with a huge oak tree before it full of rocks that call to each other at sunset and flap their great black wings over the belfry to leave Can't see the sky for them. The compiler describes the word as croaking. It doesn't seem to mean that to me, it means maternal love and paternal authority, citizenship and police regulations, the law of traffic and science of mathematics. The wealth and Commonwealth have a feathered colony in the huge branches of that splendid old tree. Well, Rosie in the Philippines, imagination is clearly clearly on fire. She then moves towards the the end, and this is where we're going to say goodbye, teresina. Philippines she says, as we draw near to the end of these letters, I wonder rather anxiously whether I have written a great deal of nonsense. A little is only natural.

Unknown Speaker  40:49  
My own knowledge is so limited. Well, that's not true. Is it? Rosina Philippine, you're very modest. Woman. I only speak right on and tell you that which you yourselves do? No. That's a quote, I think. And to be tied down to write a book on the most elusive of all the arts requires either a great supply of the sense of humour, or none at all. She's right there too. That's precisely there are two kinds of books written about acting by people with a great deal of humour, sense of humour or none at all. One thing I do know, you and I have been very much in earnest in our work together. And this has been one of the greatest joys of my theatrical life, to see your talents develop, to like safely say to you all, go make you ready. Your affectionate mother, Rosina. philipe. She doesn't sign herself as your affectionate mother. She says, Your affectionate mother, Rosina. Philippi. So we say goodbye to Rosina Philippi, who would live for another 20 years she died in 1930. So that's only a few years before Michelle Santoni opens his his London drama studio. You wonder if if she ever went to see the company cars or the the the offshoots of the Moscow arts theatre. The visited London was in the Philippines buried in Norfolk, I'm going to make a pilgrimage and try and find her grave sometime. One of the reasons for talking about Rosina today was partly in fact was mostly just to have the pleasure of spending time in her company. But I do think we have a very partial history of of actor trainers. Something that all are locked in who runs the The Guild Hall now said was that the British drama school was was predicated on a on a male tradition. And in one of my brief and bracing, and stimulating chats with the current head of lambda, Sarah Franklin, Sarah expressed similar things and although that that may be true, and I don't think it's my place to sort of make this argument, I do wonder if it's not partly just the case that we've forgotten that the the tradition of British actor training is also a female tradition, a tradition of of women and I think it's a bit of a shame that a book like Alison Hodges book on actor training doesn't include Suzanne being or Elsie Fogarty, or Trish Arnold or Iris Warren, or Rosina Philippi. Stella Adler is there and Joan Littlewood is there and later in the second edition, Maria cancelled, but but there were extra I mean, LC quality. Blimey, I mean, I know it was actor training and voice training, rather than acting sissy Barry. There there are, there are, I think the history might look different if it was written in a different way. So I'm not a historian. I'm just an acting teacher. But um, but I hope you enjoyed spending a little bit of time with Rosina philipe. In this difficult time of lockdown and the US presidential election, by the way, it's some It's Friday, the sixth of November. Although I haven't checked the news when I've been doing this, so we'll find out soon. Anyway, be safe. Enjoy your week. I'll do an interview next week. Goodbye